The subject invention relates to the plaiting or piddling of yarn, woven tapes, tow, staple, sliver, rope, or any other substantially continuous length of textile material. In the textile industry, there are many situations in which a continuous strand of material is produced and where it is necessary to plait or piddle the material into boxes, cans, or other containers for ease of transfer or storage. Aside from storage, it is often desirable to form uniform yarn packages for the purpose of dyeing the yarn. It can be appreciated that while it is desirable to form textile packages which are compact for efficient storage thereof, it is necessary that the material be collected in such a manner so as to avoid tangles, and to allow for easy withdrawal of the strand of material. This is especially important, for example, with weave-de-weave tapes where the weft can be withdrawn from only one direction. In such a situation, the collection container is typically turned upside down and the material withdrawn from the portion of the container that was the bottom thereof during filling. Clearly, such a procedure adds to problems of tangling where the material is not properly deposited. Proper collection of material is also important with respect to the dying thereof in that it is necessary to have a textile package of uniform density so that there is uniform penetration of the dye into the material. When non-uniformly dyed yarn is formed into fabric, the fabric exhibits localized dye spots or streaks which seriously affect its appearance and quality.
Several devices presently exist for depositing strands of textile material into a container. One device employs reciprocating trumpets each moving in a horizontal plane perpendicular to each other. One trumpet deposits the strand along the length of the container while the other trumpet moves the strand along the width of the container. In an alternate embodiment, a single trumpet oscillates in one plane with the container moving back and forth in the other. However, such a system is undesirable in that the reciprocating means cannot rely on simple harmonic motion, because this would result in overfilling the container in its outside or edge portions while underfilling the center portion of the container. Consequently, these devices must include additional structures which render the devices mechanically elaborate and often impractically expensive.
Other material depositing devices, commonly known as "coilers," are available but they also tend to be either complex structures or expensive to manufacture, or both. In addition, known "coilers" are undesirable in that they often insert twist into the material as it is being deposited in a container. Moreover, "coilers" may be effectively used only with containers which are substantially cylindrical in configuration, said containers being inefficient storage means because of the relatively unused space represented by the interstices between containers.
Accordingly, it is an object of the subject invention to provide an apparatus for depositing flexible materials such as tow, tape or fabric into a container in such a fashion that the material fills the container uniformly and prevents tangling of material upon removal from the container.
It is another object of the subject invention to provide an apparatus having the above characteristics which can be effectively used with boxes as well as cylindrical containers.
It is a further object of the subject invention to provide an apparatus having the above characteristics which is simple in construction and inexpensive to manufacture.